[Reader-list] Seeds become big transnational business in Iraq

[Vivek Narayanan]

  (http://jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2004-weekly/nos-21-11-2004/pol1.htm#6)
The News on Sunday -- Pakistan
November 21, 2004-- Shawal 07, 1425 A.H.
3. Political Economy

Seeds become big transnational business in Iraq
Less visible than the butchery of Fallujah are the country's subsistence
farmers who are losing the rights to use saved seed and their right to
produce their local food
By Michel Fanton

As violence rages on in Iraq under the US-led military coalition, the
occupation's corporate backers are waging a less visible but as deadly
economic war against the Iraqi population. In the frontline of this assault,
less visible than the butchery of Fallujah, are the country's subsistence
farmers who are losing the rights to use saved seed and their right to
produce their local food.

A recent report issued by international NGOs GRAIN and Focus on the Global
South1, scrutinises the Plant Variety Protection (PVP) rules that were
included in a new patent "order", one of 100 orders that were imposed on
Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority of Paul Bremer, in April 2004,
with the aim of opening the country to the full onslaught of globalised
"free for all trade".

The PVP provisions are designed to suppress traditional seed-saving and
exchange practices going back to the neo-lithic ten thousand years ago, in
favour of commercial rights that presage a takeover of Iraq's agriculture
and food supply by transnational corporations that control the agricultural
pesticide and seed business. The FAO estimated in 2002 that 97% of Iraqi
farmers used their own saved seed or bought seed from local markets.

Their main crops are wheat, barley, date and pulses, which is as big a part
of their diet and very much at the base of their food network. But under the
new regime, states the report, "farmers can neither freely legally plant nor
save for re-planting seeds of any "protected plant variety" that enters the
country.

The rights of corporate plant breeders, (seed corporations who develop seed
using genetic engineering, who own the seed, all or part of their gene
sequences, lease genes and seeds as a software, and shamelessly harvest
royalties worldwide), extend to harvested material, including plants product
obtained from the protected variety. For instance, if the protected variety
is a type of wheat, a registered cultivar, that requires less kneading as
flour to make bread, then the seed company could claim rights over the final
product, in this case it could be a "copyrighted" french stick, brioche,
croissant, or pizza base.

The unstated purpose of PVPs is to allow the interests of industrialised
agriculture to appropriate plant genetic material, apply scientific breeding
techniques including genetic engineering, and come up with "new" varieties
that meet commercial criteria. These are laid out by the UPOV convention as
"new, distinct, uniform and stable".

At Seed Savers in Australia, we know from having grown thousands of farmers'
varieties, that their seeds cannot meet these criteria of uniformity. Even
if indigenous people without formal education or even pen and paper, wanted
to--or could afford to--they don't stand a chance of registering their seeds
because their varieties are cross-pollinating, loaded with genes and very
diverse. The reason why farmers keep these local food varieties is because
they are very resilient, adapted to local conditions, and are more likely to
give a crop then the modern high-tech seeds that need pesticides,
fertilisers and irrigation. These land race or farmers' varieties are the
genetic base of today's food for all of us. This crop diversity is not
rewarded by the formal sector only used by corporate breeders for their
specialised complex genes sequences that are the base of modern patented
varieties.

We share the misgivings of GRAIN and other groups supporting biodiversity
and food sovereignty, that other vulnerable countries such as Cambodia and
Afghanistan we have recently visited, are being coerced by the US to accept
PVP regimes similar to Iraq's, which go beyond the rules even of the WTO.
Inevitably included in such bilateral trade "agreements" is the obligation
to accept GE crops.

GRAIN also warns of the potential of bio-piracy fuelled by IPR regimes that
pander to corporate profiteering. The report mentions that Iraq's national
seed bank, established in the 1970s, is feared lost, although samples of
Iraqi varieties are held in trust at an agricultural institute in Syria.
"These comprise the agricultural heritage of Iraq...and ought now to be
repatriated," the report urges. Fat chance! The security of seed banks in
Third World countries is of concern to Seed Savers members. We are appealing
for help from specialists in Intellectual Property law to advise us and
advocate for our partner seed and food networks, in the Solomons, Ecuador,
Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Now is the time for people of goodwill not only to oppose the war on Iraq
but also to support indigenous populations everywhere to resist those who
are profiteering from the war by naming them and boycotting their product.
That was the drift of a speech by Arundhati Roy recently given in Sydney,
Australia in acceptance of the Sydney Peace Prize. Now is the time for
people of goodwill not only to oppose the war on Iraq, but to help
indigenous populations everywhere resist attacks on their food sovereignty
by naming the corporations who are privatising plant genes, and boycotting
their products. -- Cobrapost News Features

The author is a co-founder of International Seed Savers.